


Dappled Sunlight

by thebewlaysister



Series: We Must Find Hope In The Impossible [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Character Death, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt Spock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 10:20:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8009878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebewlaysister/pseuds/thebewlaysister
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's been a lot of loss this year, both globally and personally, so I felt it was time I transferred some of those feelings into something creative.</p>
<p>Bones, Spock, Jim & Uhura find themselves in an impossible situation where Spock is grievously injured and dying, with nothing that can be done. And they must come to terms with the immediacy of all that comes with that.</p>
<p>I literally cried writing this, as you can imagine :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dappled Sunlight

Spock strained as a word attempted to leave his throat. "N-nyota ..." he begged.

Jim tried to nod reassuringly. "She's on her way. She's on her way, Spock..." He tried to sound calm, but every ounce of him was panicking. He knew what a shot to this side of Spock's body meant.

Spock's eyes flickered calmly upwards into the canopy of the trees. Jim followed his gaze. A dark flock of birds were streaking across the sky, heading into the west. Both sets of eyes followed the flock as they gradually faded into the distance.

Spock flinched suddenly. Jim returned his attention to his friend and saw that his breathing had become shallower. In the few moments that they had been watching the birds, a single tear had started to slip down Spock’s cheek.

Spock's gaze met Jim's and the two sets of eyes studied each other for a moment. Spock swallowed painfully, blinked slowly, but did not avert his gaze.

" _I am dying ... Jim_."

He sounded so calm, he could have been notifying his captain about something utterly trivial. His voice had briefly regained some of its energy and clarity and now a small smile of contentment had begun to grow on Spock's face. Jim felt he almost had his first officer back.

"No," Jim muttered, shaking his head in denial. "You're not going to die!" He shook Spock very slightly, as one would wake a sleeping friend. "You're not going to die, you hear me?" He tried to flatten down Spock's hair, which was slightly disturbed and sticking to his clammy forehead. In the process, however, his thumb brushed against Spock's tears. Spock's eyelids drifted shut a little.

"You can't die!" Jim cried. "I _need you_ , Spock!"

A noise in the distant undergrowth. Uhura was coming. Spock's eyes opened and shifted towards the direction of the sound, away from Jim's weeping.

"Spock!" she cried out in horror, seeing the situation before her. She hurried to Spock's side and knelt down beside them.

Jim stared hopelessly into Uhura's eyes for a few moments, as though seeking some miraculous solution from her; no Starfleet Captain had ever looked so vulnerable and helpless. As he crouched with his dying first officer in his arms, he looked almost ten years younger. He felt like a little boy once more; he, small and powerless and the universe, infinitely vast and untameable.

Uhura looked frantically from Spock's wound to Bones, but the doctor had never looked so resigned. "Leonard, please," Uhura's desperate plea caught in her throat. But Bones just shook his head, his expression one of agony and confusion. There was absolutely nothing he could do. The wound was terrible; Spock had taken a shot straight to the heart. And today the good doctor had no medical equipment, no phasers, no devices of any kind with which to improvise. Years of medical training were falling away from him and descending into the abyss. He felt suddenly naked ... exposed ... not enough.

Uhura's expression melted into an unquantifiable horror as the nature of the situation finally began to dawn on her.

Spock was dying.

As the three kneeled around Spock, Jim started to transfer him gently into Uhura's arms. The Vulcan was heavy and hot, his uniform moist to the touch. The sheer weight of him ensured that Jim's fingers dug significantly into Spock's back when he lifted him. As they proceeded, Uhura's own hands made contact with Jim's. The procedure was delicate. They didn't want to hurt him or inadvertently speed his passing.

Suddenly, a juddering breath left Spock's throat. Jim had just been preparing to peel his fingers away from the Vulcan's back when it happened. There, with both Uhura and Jim's human hands supporting his weight, Spock's final ounce of life had left him. His eyes suddenly glazed over, his steady Vulcan gaze became unfocused, his face turned blank. His fingers had laid themselves to rest on Uhura's necklace. His life's final task, to guide his fingertips towards that pendant, had left him utterly spent. And now he lay there like a doll, between Uhura and Jim, just as one had been transferring him to the other. From friend to friend.

Everybody present was quiet. Everything seemed to descend into silence. The whole world stood still and fell into their ears. They were all staring at Spock's lifeless body, as though expecting -- no, _daring_ \-- the Vulcan to spring back to life. The deafening nothingness of the whole wretched scene enveloped them.

Jim scrunched up his eyes in agony. It was too much. He felt as though his entire body was being ripped to pieces, as though the air skimming across his skin would cast all the innumerable and shattered pieces of his soul to the wind. _Not Spock, it couldn't be Spock ... Spock would never leave him ..._

Unnoticed, Bones had knelt down beside them and was now gently guiding both their hands towards the ground so Spock could finally be laid flat. Jim and Uhura pulled their hands out from underneath, and there, on the ground, the Vulcan lay still. Uhura let out an anguished cry. She laid her body against Spock's, as though hoping to transfer some piece of herself to him.

The doctor pulled Spock's eyelids gently downwards, so that he looked like he might just be engaging in a little human shut-eye. Jim's own eyes were still clasped shut. He couldn't bare to look at the situation before him. If he looked, then it would be real, and he couldn't allow that. It couldn't _possibly_ be real.

Dappled sunlight was now dancing across Spock’s face. Uhura watched it, welcomed it, resented it. How could it be that a sun still shone, but her beloved did not ?

A single sound returned to them. It was the sound of the wind in the trees. It poured into their ears like liquid : fast, too much, all at once. For a moment, it seemed, the whole world had stopped to mourn with them, but now it was urging them onwards, onwards, forwards, fast ...


End file.
